John Frederick Walker

The book-based pieces I have been making for the past twelve years grew out of empty sketchbooks, journals, notebooks and damaged bindings I was reluctant to part with, despite their contents having long been torn or sliced out. I tried treating them as experimental surfaces for the obsessive drawing I’ve done since childhood, a process that seemed to obliterate their former meanings but then began to evoke the presence of lost ideas–all those missing sketches, narratives, plans, lists, stories and arguments–that still echoed in their truncated remains.

They surprised me by coming to life again, like whole creatures conjured from skins and pelts. The process became its own force, and I turned to library discards and other dumped and forgotten volumes as a source of raw material and inspiration.

I have always been intrigued by the visual tension created when a simple design is rendered in a sensuous, highly tactile manner. In these works, facing pages, empty covers and splayed, bifurcated paper become armatures for mark-making—which essentially reconstitutes the objects as drawings. The glossy shimmer of graphite hatching on many is no accidental byproduct, but a formal device I’ve long used which lets light play over their surfaces like fleeting references.

Beyond the missing narratives these broken books insist on, such flattened, eviscerated forms might suggest wings, petals, giant moths… but in the end they remain specimens of a very private taxonomy.

-JFW

Solo Exhibitions:

2006 “Lost Texts,” Argazzi Art, Lakeville, Connecticut

1999 “Little Dead Texts 1996-1999,” Westenburg Gallery, Marfa, Texas

1995 “Geometric Drawings & Monoprints,” Swiss Hospitality Institute, Washington, Connecticut

1993 “Cancellation Paintings,” Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, Connecticut

1993 “Paintings and Drawings 1972-1992″ Kent School Art Gallery, Kent , Connecticut

Selected Group Exhibitions:

2006 “Global,” curated by Richard Klein, Westport Arts Center, Westport, Connecticut

2000 “Works On Paper,” Park Avenue Armory, New York, New York

1999 “Celebrating the Millennium,” Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent, Connecticut

1997 “Walker/ Gibbs/ Sullivan,” Westenburg Gallery, Marfa, Texas

1996 “A 30-Mile Circle,” Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent, Connecticut

1992 “19 Artists from Kent,” Bachelier-Cardonsky Gallery, Kent, Connecticut

Public Collections:

The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

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